Sheep Guarding Llama

It is quickly starting to feel like I fly all of the time!  This time I am off to San Francisco, California.  It has been about a year since I was last out there so this is about right for my pattern.  This is a quick one, though.  I will be out there this evening and leaving tomorrow evening.  I will be on the ground in the Bay Area for only twenty seven hours.

I got up at seven this morning so that I would have plenty of time to get ready and not have to rush or anything.  Pretty much all of the packing was done last night so there was little beyond shaving and showering to do for me today.  I shaved my head as my hair was getting a little long.

We were on the road at about nine forty.  Forty minutes later than we had originally said that we should leave but plenty of time considering that I am flying out of White Plains and not a major airport.  And it is a Sunday too.  We got to the airport just fine and I grabbed breakfast at Dunkin Donuts in the airport after kissing the girls goodbye.  This is a short trip, hopefully they will not miss me too much.  I am returning on the red eye tomorrow night.

I got right through security, no one in line, it was just me.  That only took five minutes or less.  So I got into the waiting area and had time to work on my laptop and charge it up some while waiting for me flight to be announced.

The first flight was incredibly cramped and I was a bit soar after it.  I was in the very first row in those extra small seats with no forward cargo room.  I had to lean into the isle the entire flight which was about an hour and a half.  Thankfully that was the shorter of the two legs.

I got the Charlotte at two and did not have to board my flight until after four and we were not to take off until nearly five.  So I had a lot of time to kill.  I went to the “Taste of the Carolinas” restaurant which, of course, was operated by the California Pizza Kitchen.  I got some beer and a tuna melt.  It was okay but nothing special (the food or the beer.)

I ended up making a friend at the bar and he and I talked for over an hour which made the time go a lot faster.  He is going out to San Francisco for an interview tomorrow too.

The flight from Charlotte to San Francisco was packed but it was a large Airbus A320 so there was enough room to be comfortable.  It was not a bad flight, just insanely long.  The longest flight that I have taken in a very long time.  There was no in-flight entertainment.  I tried to nap a little but that really didn’t work.  I read a lot on my iPad Mini which worked well.  At least that time was productive.

We landed a bit early, just before seven local time.  So between a five and a six hour flight.

I got a taxi after landing and headed over to Jeff Pierce’s house for pizza and to hang out for a little while.  We only get to see each other about once a year.

Jeff lives only about ten minutes from the airport.  Turns out there was a bit of a party at his house so I had people to hang out with for much of the evening.  We had a really good time hanging out.  We stayed until about ten then Zach and Doug drove me out to Palo Alto which was a rather long drive.

I am staying at the Sheraton Palo Alto tonight.  It was pretty nice.  I got checked in and relaxed for a little while.  It was probably around midnight when I got off to sleep.  I have a really long day tomorrow so am hoping to manage to get good sleep tonight which is always hard when on the west coast.  My body will make me get up far earlier than I would like.

Today turned into a “panic” prep day for my interview in California tomorrow.  Originally we had been thinking that there would be a few days before I was going to go out there but at the last minute last evening they were able to schedule me for Monday morning which means that I need to fly out tomorrow morning so today is my only day to get everything ready to go now.

I slept in a little and got to get well rested.  I spent the first part of the day, till about two or three o’clock, with the girls allowed in the room with me.  They were mostly good and just played quietly, more or less, on their own.  I managed to do a little bit of prep work this morning, mostly working on my Python skills.  More than anything else just doing Python stuff to make sure that all of it stays current because I have to do so much of it under pressure on Monday again but I do so little of it in general.  Just keeping it all fresh is the most important thing.

By mid afternoon I ended up getting dragged into a support call with Art and Joe who are doing stuff in Manhattan.  I ended up putting in a couple of hours helping them out with what they were working on.

After that disruption I had to “lock myself in” so that I could work in the bedroom alone for most of the evening.

We got some new video games today in all of the sales.  I got the Prince of Persia series that Liesl asked for.  I got the first eight (out of nine) Leisure Suit Larry games for Dominica, which she has been wanting.  And I got Neverwinter Nights 2 for myself.  We also got the PC version of Dragon Age II so that Dominica can start playing that on her laptop.  We are planning on packing up the PS3 relatively soon and it would be annoying for her to start playing Dragon Age II on there and then have it unavailable for an indefinite amount of time.  So we bought the PC version and she was downloading that for much of the day.  She has been wanting to play that for a long time.  Dragon Age Origins is her favourite video game of all time so it is pretty surprising that she has never played the sequel which we have owned since it originally released around 2011.

By evening Dominica had DA2 downloaded and was playing it on her 4K resolution laptop which really pushes the game.  It runs okay but she has to turn all of the settings all of the way down and it is still a little jerky.  I am looking forward to playing it again once I have a real gaming machine on which to play it.  I want to play through Dragon Age Origins and Dragon Age II completely on the new rig before looking into getting Dragon Age Inquisition sometime next year when the prices come down.  I figure that it will take me long enough to work through the two games (it is probably 150 hours of gaming in there) that there is plenty of time for the price to drop.  I am attempting to read the Dragon Age novels before then too so that I am completely up to date.  I learned what a good idea that that was from reading the Mass Effect novels in conjunction with playing those titles.

We managed to get everyone off to bed at a reasonable time.  We have an early start tomorrow and the girls are not known for wanting to get up early in the morning so we want them to get as much sleep as possible so that they are not too grumpy when we have to head off to the airport.

Dominica got me all packed for tomorrow.  We should be able to pretty much just get up and go.  I made a trip up to the attic and got down a ton of empty, collapsed boxes for her to assemble and start packing while I am gone.  We are thinking that we might begin our trek towards Texas as early as Tuesday evening after I return from California, nap and am ready to get into the car.  It is going to be one long, crazy week.  I might end up doing a continuous week of travel after having just done the crazy traveling the last two days!!

I was pretty tired this morning, only three hours of sleep last night, but I had to be up at eight so that Art and I could unload the oven from the back of the van and get the van returned to the UHaul place in Mohegan Lake before nine.  Even if we did not have to get the van returned that early Dominica and Danielle want to go up to Wappinger’s Falls to do some shopping and need to be there at ten thirty so we needed to get moving just to get back in time to watch the kids so that they could go.

Unloading the stove was quick and easy.  We just carried it into the house and then took the van back.  I really like the new UHaul place that we are using now.  They were really friendly and the whole thing, which was nearly 700 miles of driving, was only $275.  That was an amazing price with all of that mileage.  I am very glad that we did that trip, it was well worth it.  Although I wonder how much the cost of that trip was something that Dominica calculated into the cost of the acquiring the stove in the first place.

On the way back to the house, Art and I stopped at Dunkin Donuts and picked up breakfast for Art, Dominica and me.  Danielle cannot eat anything from there so there was nothing to be done about her.  She will eat later.

We got to the house just in time for Dominica to eat and for her and Danielle to get on the road.  Wappinger’s Falls is a good forty five minute drive away so they had to get moving.

Art spent an hour or so taking out the old stove and installing the new one.  That went really smoothly.  The kitchen looks to be greatly upgraded now.  The new stove looks much better.  It is new, modern and stainless steel rather than the old all white one that was probably original with the house.  And the new one works too.  It is also a double oven.  One small oven and one large one.  Very handy.  That is a really nice feature.  We are very thankful to have that all installed and Dominica  is going to get the old one listed on Freecycle later today in the hopes that someone will want it soon.

Art also worked on the basement stairs that broke on us the other day.  That did not take too long.  It turned out that it just needed some screws put in and everything put back together.  Fifteen minutes and it was better than new. Much more solid.  We were afraid that we were going to have to replace the whole thing which would have been awful given the tight time frame that we have to deal with things like that right now.

After Dominica and Danielle returned to the house we pretty much got them straight out the door and down to the Peekskill train station.  I dropped them off so that they could get into Manhattan on the early side, get to their hotel and have time to eat and relax before needing to go into the office there and work all evening.  Their plan is to work a lot this evening and a bit tomorrow and only a tiny bit on Sunday morning which should be mostly a simple checkout and then have time to relax on Sunday.  We will see them back at the house on Monday.

I finally got work this afternoon about my interview that I just had in Seattle.  It is bad news, they have decided that they don’t have a position open for my skill set right at the moment.  But the good news was that I passed all of the interview rounds and that they really liked me and are definitely interested in hiring me, just not right at the moment.  They will call me if one of the slots on the team opens up and they are going to look around the company to see if there is another position somewhere for me.  So it is unfortunate that there is not a job for me there right now, but it is very encouraging that I passed through a very rigorous interview process and have them as an open option in the future and now, having gone through that process, it should be much easier for me to look at positions there down the road.

I got my interview in California scheduled.  We were trying to schedule something for Tuesday but, late in the evening, we ended up getting it scheduled for Monday morning.  So this evening was spent rapidly putting together travel plans so that I can head out to San Francisco on Sunday!  Very short notice.  There is a lot going on.  This is great, though, because I will be back for Tuesday and we have nothing blocking us from getting down to Texas for the holidays.  We have been worried about when we were going to be able to schedule getting down there and did not want to cut it too closely.  This will allow us to get there at a relaxed pace, we need to hit Rochester and Canton on the way, and still get there with a lot of time to spend with the family.  Dominica’s parents are heading down there tomorrow by plane.  We will be driving, though.

We did a little relaxing this evening, which is hard to do with so much going on.  It was rather late by the time that we had everything worked out so not much time to spend preparing for the interview process itself.  I will be spending tomorrow doing that instead of today.  I have nothing else on the schedule for tomorrow so, in theory, I will be able to focus on that for the entire day which is good because after tomorrow I am doing nothing but traveling for pretty much an entire week which is pretty crazy.

I am exhausted just thinking about all of the things that we have going on in the very near future.  The really good news about the interview schedule is that if it was on Tuesday we should have gotten feedback on it by Thursday.  But as it is Monday there is a good chance that we will know things and be able to do a little more planning by Tuesday night!

Today is going to be a rough one.  We had to be up slightly early this morning, pack up the kids and run to Mohegan Lake to pick up a UHaul Cargo Van that we scheduled yesterday.  Pick up time was at nine.  We didn’t make it exactly for nine but by ten we were home with the van.  Today is nothing but getting the van, packing it and traveling.  Nothing else.  There is no time for anything.  The Ralstons are coming to our house tonight too, but I will not have any time to see them.

It took many hours to load the van.  I had warned Dominica that she was completely misunderstanding the size of a cargo van and that we would be able to take so much more stuff than she was imagining that we would be able to take in this one trip.  We ended up actually spending over three hours packing the van!  It was seriously exhausting.  I mean really awful.  I had to load nearly every box into the van.  Dominica spent much of the time out in the van organizing the boxes.

The drive to dad’s was pretty long but the van was decent. I managed to listen to a book via Audible most of the way in the van.  I started reading, and made it through most of, “The Stolen Throne” which is the first of the Dragon Age prequel books that take place before the events of Dragon Age Origins.  The book was pretty good and gripping enough to keep me wide awake for  the entire drive.  It turns out that there are a trio of novels set before Origins.  Now I need to read the other two as well.

I had a little snow as I crossed southern New York but did not hit any real accumulation until I was on Interstate 390 at Avoca. It still was not bad but it slowed me down driving north.  I was driving in the dark from around Binghamton which was pretty depressing as I had to do the seven hundred mile round trip all today and needed to get to each place by a certain time.  I got such a late start.  This was going to be pretty rough and I was already soar.

As I neared dad’s house there was a bit of snow on the ground and driving got harder.  There were a few inches on the road by his house.

I had almost no time at dad’s.  I stopped and he and I quickly unloaded the van together.  It probably took no more than thirty minutes.  I had to get out to Frankfort well before eleven and there was no time to spare.  The moment that the van was empty I was out the door and rushing east.

I got to Frankfort with the empty van at ten thirty.  Dominica’s dad and I loaded the stove into the van and eventually figured out how to secure it.  Then I was right back onto the road to get back home with the stove.

The drive south went fine on the Thruway.  No issues there.  The roads were pretty clear.

I got home to Peekskill with the van at three in the morning and I was really exhausted.  Dominica, Art and Danielle were all still awake waiting for me.  Liesl and Luciana were sleeping in Dominica and my room on the floor with their little air mattress.  They enjoy doing that from time to time.  It is like an adventure for them.

Tomorrow is going to be pretty busy in the morning.  Art and I will need to unload the stove from the van and then return the van to the UHaul place before nine in the morning.  That will be easy other than the general lack of sleep.

Today is my final phone interview day with Facebook.  And there is more packing to do before we get the moving cargo van in the morning.

My interview today seemed to go well.  Will not likely know anything more until tomorrow or the day after.  But at least it did not go poorly.  Always so hard to tell.  This one was earlier in the afternoon so the entire day was not shot after this one.

I have nothing scheduled (interview-wise) at this point so this afternoon and evening were spent getting ready for me to take the cargo van to dad’s house tomorrow.